


Agatha Heterodyne and the Ultimate Answer

by Sturzkampf



Category: Girl Genius
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-18
Updated: 2015-06-18
Packaged: 2018-04-04 23:55:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,342
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4157751
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sturzkampf/pseuds/Sturzkampf
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Agatha has been traumatised by her latest Adventure and Krosp has to make a decision that could break her heart and plunge Europa into war.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Agatha Heterodyne and the Ultimate Answer

They finally found Agatha down by the banks of the Dyne. She had vanished into the crowds that morning immediately after her airship returned to Mechanicsburg from the disastrous adventure. As the day lengthened towards evening the inhabitants of Castle Heterodyne became increasingly alarmed when she did not return. In theory it is impossible to be lost in Mechanicsburg. The Castle sees everything and everywhere (apart from the area around the Cathedral and Moloch von Zinzer's special double-secret hiding cupboard, but it doesn't know that). But the Castle is loyal to The Heterodyne and not even the Emperor of All Cats can command it to help when The Heterodyne tells it that she wants to be alone.

Finally Krosp had employed his 'sister', the wolf construct Florence, to track Agatha down by scent. In fact Krosp's sense of smell was every bit as good as Florence's but Emperors do not get down on all fours and snuffle in public. Krosp had travelled the streets in his 'Şoarece' mechanical walker leaving the wolf to do the hard work. Even with Florence's excellent tracking it had taken them over an hour to follow Agatha through the maze of smells that criss-crossed the busy city to a bench on the river bank by one of the new footbridges. They stood by the railings on the high embankment and looked down to where she sat staring unseeing into the fast flowing water, her mind far away, her face full of the troubles of the World.

“She looks so vulnerable and hurt and injured,” Florence said quietly.

“That adventure was very traumatic for her. She's in a lot of mental distress.” Krosp replied. He became aware of a slow dripping sound. 'It's a leaking gutter.' he told himself. 'If it isn't a leaking gutter I don't know want to know what it is.'

Looking round, he saw a steady stream of drool dribbling from the wolf's mouth onto the pavement.

“Florence!” he exclaimed sharply. “I know that as a wolf you find injured creatures especially appetising, but let me make it clear that no matter how distressed Lady Heterodyne appears you are not under any circumstances to try to eat her, do you understand?”

Florence laid her ears flat. “Yes Krosp.”

“Look, it's probably best if you go back to the Castle and let me handle this. Here.”

He put in his hand in the pocket of his greatcoat and pulled out a couple of doggy treats. Florence's ears perked up and her tail began to wag as he gave them to her. She held them in her hand and looked at the cat expectantly. Krosp sighed.

“Wait... Wait... Good dog!”

At his signal, Florence wolfed down the doggy treats. Krosp reached across to stroke her head, taking the opportunity to wipe the grease from the disgusting biscuits from his hand onto her fur. Secretly he despised the entire pack mentality but was also well aware of the importance of remaining alpha male to a construct that under other circumstances would regard him as a combination of squeaky toy and light snack. “Off you go now.” he told Florence and watched her run up the hill back towards the Castle.

Once she was out of sight he climbed down from his mech' and descended the steps from the embankment to the bench by the edge of the Dyne. He sprang up besides Agatha and rubbed his head against her arm in his best 'adorable kitten' pose. Agatha looked round, aware of him for the first time.

“Hi Agatha. Thought I'd better let you know I was fine,” he said. “I didn't want you to worry about me.” Agatha stroked his head absently and gave a deep sigh. Krosp looked up, concerned. “Are you still worried about the adventure? Nothing that happened there was your fault, you know that?”

At first sight it had seemed such an obvious simple problem for The Heterodyne to fix. An aggressive, technological based culture was expanding into and settling territory occupied by a native population that still hadn't made it past the tribal hunter gatherer stage and was without writing, a proper calendar or a number greater than ten. To make things worse the natives were living right on top of vast reserves of just about every raw material a technological civilisation could ever need. To the settlers it didn't seem fair that the natives were squandering such valuable resources, but when they moved in to start mining they found themselves attacked with stone axes and flint arrows. The settlers had more than enough weapons to not only fight back very effectively but also to drive the tribes from their homeland.

Word had reached Mechanicsburg of this injustice and it had seemed only natural that Lady Heterodyne should intervene to protect the defenceless natives against their oppressors. But when the Heterodyne air fleet arrived in the far-off country, they had found no-one to save. They had gone equipped to deal with a vast flood of refugees displaced by the advancing colonisers, but had found only a few scattered and cowed remnants fleeing the settlers' advance. The tens of thousands of people from the many nomadic tribes scattered across the Plain seemed to have simply vanished into thin air. Then Ognian, Maxim and Dimo, scouting in enemy territory, had discovered the terrible truth; a vast machine, a titanic mobile factory belching fire and smoke moving inexorably across the landscape: the Genocide Engine.

Although they had been steadily pushing back the tribes, the settlers were few in number and they mourned every man and woman that they lost. Rather than sustain a steady flow of casualties from a long and dirty war they had sat down like rational and civilised people and created the Genocide Engine, the Ultimate Answer to their native problem. For almost ten years it had been slowly crawling across the Great Plains, leaving horror in its wake. Even now she was safely back home at the seat of her power, Agatha was still reliving the horrors of that fateful day when she had seen the Genocide Engine at first hand.

“The settlers... they were just rounding up the natives and feeding them into that dreadful mechanism and it just – it just ate them.”

Krosp was worried by the anguish in her voice. “We've seen some pretty unpleasant Spark creations before now and seen the consequences when they've been used on people.”

“But those have been operated by the Sparks who created them, taking revenge for some trivial slight or pursuing some idiotic plan for World Domination. It's been unpleasant sometimes, but it is just one individual who wasn't really rational and a few over-enthusiastic minions. This was completely different. An entire population deliberately commissioning a machine to systematically eradicate their enemies. An insane individual is one thing. This was a culture that had sat down and worked out how to completely destroy another race in the most expedient and efficient way possible.”

Actually, the Genocide Engine had rather impressed Krosp. It was a marvel of Spark-created engineering that extracted all the components of its victims for future use. A Mechanicsburg butcher could find a use for every part of a pig. The Spark who created the Engine had applied the same principle to humans. Not only were the biological components recycled to animal feed, fertilizer and good quality tallow, but the Engine also extracted the trace elements and metals, even the molybdenum, in almost pure form, ready for use in a range of manufacturing industries. It even knitted the hair into really warm socks. Of course, being a cat, none of this upset Krosp. It did upset Agatha. It upset her a lot. Somehow the scale and the awful sanity of the settlers had made this latest terrible device ten times worse. Agatha was a Heterodyne, but she was also a young woman from a sheltered upbringing. The Abyss does not like people who stare and the horrors she had set herself to defeat were starting to take their toll. Krosp did his best to comfort her.

“Well at least we went in with everything we had and destroyed it. It was a tough fight and we lost some people, but we did the right thing. It won't be killing anyone else. The settlers won't be able to rebuild it. It will take them long enough to even collect all the pieces after you'd finished with your new death ray.”

Agatha clenched her fists in anger. “But what about the scientist who built it? None of the settlers we saw had a strong enough Spark to create that abomination. They said that it was created for them in Paris; the final year practical project of one of the brighter students. That is still the one loose end that I cannot live with. How can we leave such a criminal unpunished?”

Krosp took a deep breath. This was the critical moment. “You know, I was just wondering if it was a really strong Spark in Paris about ten years ago, then it might have been, well....”

“Who?!” 

“Well, er...” Krosp's nerve failed him. “Well, perhaps it might have been the very late and very much unlamented Martellus Von Blitzengaard. Maybe?”

Agatha shook her head. “Now Krosp that is just wishful thinking. If you stopped to think you'd remember that Tweedle was attending the Pedagogical University of St. Petersburg at the time.” 

“Oh yes, I'd forgotten,” he lied. He switched to Plan B. “You do know that we're never going to find out who made it don't you? And even if we do, it probably won't mean anything anyway. It'll be some obscure mad boy living out in the middle of nowhere who made the Engine for his student project, probably cribbing it from half the Sparks in Paris, and then forgot about it. At that age, he wouldn't have thought through the consequences of his actions. It would have been just another interesting problem set by his tutor and a chance to get good marks. And it's not as though he will ever have used it personally. Even if he hasn't been killed by one of his own creations or blown up by another Spark, what good would it do to track him down and punish him?” 

Agatha was not to be diverted so easily. “Whoever did this shouldn't be allowed to get away with it! No matter how long it takes he should be hunted down and the full consequences of what he has done brought home to him!” 

“So, you can't forgive him then?”  Krosp watched Agatha closely from the corner of his eye as he asked.

“No! I can never forgive and I can never forget, not after what I have seen! NEVER!” Agatha was shouting.

Krosp sighed and jumped down from the seat. He walked across to the bridge and leaned on the lowermost railing, looking down into the fast flowing water, his back to Agatha.

“I really don't think we'll ever find out who built the Genocide Engine you know. After our last visit it's not as though the Master of Paris is going to let you look through the Ecole's records and there was no sigil plate on the machine.” 

“That is what really annoys me. Who could have removed that sigil plate from the wreckage of the control room?”

“Probably just knocked off by a clumsy minion over the years or ripped from the panel when we destroyed the Engine?”

“No there was fresh shiny metal. It had been removed not long before we arrived there. And whoever took it was no mechanic. It had been crudely prised off by someone in a hurry who couldn't even be bothered to unscrew it properly. It hadn't been torn off when the Engine was destroyed either. I looked everywhere for it, but it wasn't there. Someone had deliberately taken it away so we wouldn't find it.”

‘I know you couldn’t find it’, thought Krosp, ‘because I have it here in my pocket.’  His paws were not designed for using tools more complicated than a tin opener and it had been touch and go whether he would lever the plate off the main control panel before Agatha arrived. As it was, there had been just enough time to hide it out of sight in his coat pocket. Checking that Agatha couldn't see he pulled the plate out and read the enamelled lettering for the last time:

Gilgamesh Holzfäller  
Third year practical project  
First Class Honours  
Ecole de l’Strange, Paris

The question was, now that Agatha was back home safe in Mechanicsburg, was she ready to learn the truth? The answer was quite obviously no. If he told her that the Genocide Engine had been created by the man she loved, then her mind was going to derail in a spectacular train wreck. The consequences for Agatha personally, the fragile balance between Mechanicsburg and Empire, the entire peace of Europa and (most importantly) Krosp's safe and comfortable position here in Mechanicsburg would be catastrophic. Stealthily he dropped the metal plate over the side of the bridge into the fast flowing water.

“Honestly Agatha, you need to let it go. You must recognise the problems that have no solution and put them aside. Don't allow them to divert you from tackling the problems that you can fix.”

Behind him Agatha sighed and stood up.

“I suppose you’re right again, as usual. I do need to put it all behind me and go forward. I must not let this one bad experience stop me from solving all the problems in the World. But first – oh first I need a drink! Perhaps a small Liebfraumilch.” She patted her many pockets. “Oh bother, but I don’t have any money!”

Krosp watched the last glimmer of metal as the sigil plate sank forever into the depths of the Dyne, the corrosive waters already starting to strip away the enamel. He turned with false cheerfulness.

“Don't worry Agatha. You can owe me this one.”

**Author's Note:**

> _Readers may feel there is a certain similarity between the denouement of this story and the best scene from the greatest TV detective series of all time. I could not possibly comment._
> 
> _Agatha Heterodyne, Krosp, Mechanicsburg and Castle Heterodyne are creations of Studio Foglio._
> 
> _Florence is inspired by Florence Ambrose from the web comic Freefall._


End file.
